In June 2024 China's Gotion High Tech, a major manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries, announced a $1.3bn investment to build Morocco's first electric vehicle (EV) battery "gigafactory". In a deal signed with the Morocco government, Gotion High Tech agreed to construct the factory with an initial battery capacity of 20 gigawatt hours (GWh), with the ultimate ambition of building a $6.5bn, 100 GWh factory - making it one of China's most significant manufacturing projects in Africa.
This investment deal is symbolic of a much broader deepening of political and economic relations between Beijing and Rabat. In 2024, the total volume of China-Morocco trade surpassed $9bn, making China the North African country's third largest trading partner in the world. Trade then rose again in 2025 to just under $11bn - an increase of over 20% in a single year.
While Morocco imports a variety of goods from China - with Beijing becoming a key exporter of products including electronics, industrial equipment, vehicles and plastics; and more modest volumes of goods such as copper and minerals heading in the other direction - the relationship has now evolved beyond trade alone, with Chinese companies pouring billions of dollars into Morocco's automotive and manufacturing sectors.
As well as the Gotion High Tech deal, in 2024 Chinese auto battery manufacturers Hailiang and Shinzoom announced similar plans to set up two separate plants near Morocco's northern port city of Tangier. Hailiang's factory is designed to produce copper, with Shinzoom setting up in Tangier to produce anodes - two vital materials for EVs.
Originally published by African Business.